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At one time I would have agreed Tacitus as a non - Biblical historian attesting to Jesus. But - thanks to our pal Pneuma who pointed out that a provincial governor can be Either Prefect or procurator (depending upon whether he is exercising military or fiscal duties) - Tacitus assumed that the governor of Judea was a procurator, as they all were after Vitellius, (I'll look it up...ah, after Pilate it's Marcellus, then it's Marullus to 41 AD After that, it's Procurators) but (the inscription tells us) Pilate was prefect at the time. So Tacitus is not checking records. So where did he hear the claim at all? Obviously from Christians. So it's really only a gospel -claim that Tacitus is repeating, just like Pliny, Thallia, Bar Serapeon and the rest.
A prefect could be a procurator at the same time, which was a problem for the high ranking Tacitus. A person of low rank who was a procurator for the emperor would have higher powers (when procuring) than a senator.
So if the passage is genuine, Tacitus could be using the term procurator to mock Pilate instead of giving his more respectable rank of prefect.
As you may have heard me say before, if something in the Bible is not 'historically' true but only 'spiritually, metaphorically or symbolically', to me that is saying it isn't true at all.
If a (largely hypothetical ) Christian reads me on the resurrection and thinks: "Coo - they do all fatally contradict, therefore must have been made up and -yes -if they were made up, there cannot be an original resurrection or they wouldn't need to make one up". What would he do? Like Paul he might say 'If there is no resurrection, our faith is in vain'. Or he might, like you, see it as having symbolic, metaphorical or spiritual' value.
I don't care. Whether a thing happened or not, the 'spiritual' message that goes with it is always open to human question. It's the 'the Bible, even if not true, has some good things in' argument. Yes, but they are good in themselves, that is they stand up as good compared with humanist ethics. If not, they are bad. And whether they actually happened or not is irrelevant.
Thus to me, whether the resurrection is true or not is the Only thing that matters.
If I am reading Mystic correctly, it doesn't matter whether the stories have errors or fatally contradict one another. That's the "irrelevant" part of his statement. What is relevant to Mystic is that these stories, with all their errors and contradiction give us an inspired portrait of God trying to make us understand Him in the form of his son, Jesus. Even if they had inserted Aesop's Fables into the gospels it wouldn't have mattered as long as Aesop's animals interacting with Jesus gave us a better understanding of his salfivic work--eg. Jesus telling the hare not to try to outrun the tortoise because when all are judged before him the last (the tortoise) will be first. Did I get that right, Mystic?
Wikipedia
Josephus
Titus Flavius Josephus (/dʒoʊˈsiːfəs/;[1] Greek: Φλάβιος Ἰώσηπος; 37 – c. 100),[2] born Yosef ben Matityahu (Hebrew: יוסף בן מתתיהו, Yosef ben Matityahu; Greek: Ἰώσηπος Ματθίου παῖς),was a first-century Romano-Jewish historian who was born in Jerusalem—then part of Roman Judea—to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus
Wikipedia
Tacitus
Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (/ˈtæsɪtəs/; Classical Latin: [ˈtakɪtʊs]; c. 56 – c. 120 AD) was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus
omega2xx (born; sometime in the 20th century).
What do these three individuals have in common? All three were born AFTER the time frame the Gospels indicate that Jesus lived and died. As a result NONE of the three have any direct knowledge of Jesus, but must rely on what they have heard from others!
Therefore the obvious question becomes, does "that's what I heard" make a story of a corpse coming back to life and flying away plausible? And the answer to this question depends entirely on one's inclination to suspend reason and to embrace abject gullibility, largely because it makes them feel all warm and fuzzy to do so.
If you don't know what plagiarism is, please go to dictionary.com and look it up. If is obvious that at least one person here doesn't know what the term means. It means using the words of another person as one's own.
Any further misuse of he term will be construed as an attempt to derail he thread and will be dealt wih accordingly.
Anyone can google a subject. I knew you didn't know when you were using the term. Thanks for confirming my suspensions.
Troutdude's link is to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Are you disputing the accuracy of that source? Did you even read it? At other times, people have used a link to a Wikipedia article that describes the 12 books of the Fundamentals.
If you don't know what plagiarism is, please go to dictionary.com and look it up. If is obvious that at least one person here doesn't know what the term means. It means using the words of another person as one's own.
Any further misuse of he term will be construed as an attempt to derail he thread and will be dealt wih accordingly.
Thus to me, whether the resurrection is true or not is the Only thing that matters.
I understand that Arq, but you do not believe that our attempts to understand God are being influenced in any way BY God and I DO. Because of that difference, I view ALL the efforts in the spiritual fossil record through that lens and I see the influence of God. Obviously, as physical creatures operating in a physical milieu, our thoughts will be triggered by the physical events and circumstances within which they occur. But it is the interpretations and the impact on our attempts to understand God that are the relevant criteria, not the specifics of the physical milieu. Whether or not Mithra actually fought a Bull is irrelevant to the primitive Savior meme that illustrates our need to overcome our animal nature.
If I am reading Mystic correctly, it doesn't matter whether the stories have errors or fatally contradict one another. That's the "irrelevant" part of his statement. What is relevant to Mystic is that these stories, with all their errors and contradiction, give us an inspired portrait of God trying to make us understand Him in the form of his son, Jesus. Even if they had inserted Aesop's Fables into the gospels it wouldn't have mattered as long as Aesop's animals interacting with Jesus gave us a better understanding of his salvific work--eg. Jesus telling the hare not to try to outrun the tortoise because when all are judged before him the last (the tortoise) will be first. Did I get that right, Mystic?
This is a reasonable interpretation of my main point about the spiritual impact of the stories because I believe they are influenced (NOT controlled, dictated, or edited) by God. That is why we need to "study to show ourselves approved" by spiritually interpreting them and filtering out the dross of human corruptions using the "mind of Christ."
A prefect could be a procurator at the same time, which was a problem for the high ranking Tacitus. A person of low rank who was a procurator for the emperor would have higher powers (when procuring) than a senator.
So if the passage is genuine, Tacitus could be using the term procurator to mock Pilate instead of giving his more respectable rank of prefect.
Possibly, but I rather think that - like the generality of scholars until the Pilate stone was discovered - it was assumed that Pilate was a procurator - just as was the case in Tacitus' time. I don't quite buy it that Tacitus would be seeking to mock Pilate. If anything he was mocking the Christians and their crucified leader. Pilate in his view would be a sound chap who did his job.
Lie #15. We have a creed proving Jesus' resurrection that dates to within 3 years of his resurrection. Rubbish! This is one of those fables like "all the apostles were willing to die for their faith" (Lie #4 in my OP) that gets passed around from Christian to Christian with such frequency that it becomes urban legend. The "creed" found in 1Corinthians 15:3-7 hasn't a single historical recordation outside of Paul quoting it in Corinthians circa 50 CE. Consequently we have no idea at all what its origins are. It's likely Paul heard these stories and lumped them together into one verse for his epistle, nothing more. And this is even assuming historians are accurate that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in 50 CE. Fundamentalist scholars are only too happy to continue spreading this myth since their actual "evidence" for the resurrection is non-existent. Historians Robert Price and Hermann Detering rightly argue:
Quote:
"1 Corinthians 15:3–7 was NOT an early Christian creed written within five years of Jesus' death and denied that Paul wrote the verses, and Detering but believed it was an Interpolation possibly dating to as far back as the beginning of the 2nd century. Price stated that "The pair of words in verse 3a, "received / delivered" (paralambanein / paradidonai) is a technical language for the handing on of rabbinical tradition", so it would contradict Paul's tale of conversion described in Galatians 1:13–24 which explicitly says that Paul had been taught the gospel of Christ by Jesus himself, not by any other man.
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) Christian reads me on the resurrection and thinks: "Coo - they do all fatally contradict, therefore must have been made up and -yes -if they were made up, there cannot be an original resurrection or they wouldn't need to make one up". What would he do? Like Paul he might say 'If there is no resurrection, our faith is in vain'. Or he might, like you, see it as having symbolic, metaphorical or spiritual' value.
